


him entirely and all together

by numinousnumbat



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Drinking, M/M, Swearing, Welters Challenge 2018, eliot mentions homophobes from his past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 01:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14781305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/numinousnumbat/pseuds/numinousnumbat
Summary: When Quentin can’t block his thoughts about Eliot, Penny locks the two of them in a closet until they sort it out. For the 2018 Welters Challenge, Theme 4: “Ships.”





	him entirely and all together

**Author's Note:**

> [The Welters Challenge tumblr.](https://thewelterschallenge.tumblr.com/)

“So you need me to land all of us on a _dragon_ , a dragon that is _flying_ , flying in another _world_ , another world where _time_ moves differently?” Penny said. “That is the _worst_ plan I have ever heard.”

They had gathered in the Physical Kids Cottage to figure out how to get the next key. Alice had an idea, of course she did, and now Penny could feel a headache coming. He could travel to Hawaii and never have to deal with these people again. Or the Seychelles, he loved the Seychelles.

“But you can do it, right?” Alice asked. “I did the calculations and it’s theoretically possible, but there hasn’t been enough written by Travelers for me to know if it’s possible in a real world application.” 

Penny blinked a few times, running through the magic in his head. “I could use an astral projection to find the dragon, I guess, then just fine-tune the spell before we land.”

“Right!” Margo said. “We have all of the maps of Fillory, too, and Eliot and I know the moon cycles by heart now.”

“Well, I have a cheat sheet,” Eliot said from where he was pretending to not pay attention from the side of the room.

Penny closed his eyes. The calculations were complex. He needed to convert from the Earth’s moon to the double moons in Fillory and then land on a moving target. He could do this. He breathed in like he had practiced. He breathed out slowly.

_What if we changed to a value added tax? Eliot looks so good in that shirt. Tomatoes are a fruit, so yes fruit does belong on pizza. I think we used to kiss, maybe we could do that again. I've got a sweet tooth, for licorice drops and jelly roll. Oh, Eliot licked his lips._

Things were way too loud for this. “HEY!” Penny shouted over the din of voices in his mind. The entire group swiveled to look at him. “Everyone, please block harder. Think of a brick wall and then build a wall around that,” Penny said. “I need silence from every single one of you if I’m going to do this.”

He closed his eyes again.

_Eliot’s hair looks really good right now. What would be better: pizza ingredients in a taco or taco ingredients on a pizza. I should talk to Eliot tonight, or maybe tomorrow, or maybe after we’re back from this trip._

Better, but still too loud. Penny turned to Josh. “If you don’t start blocking right now, I will tell everyone that thing you think about whenever you’re in the bathroom.”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Josh said. “Those are private thoughts and you will not shame me for them.”

Penny licked his lips. Oh, it was going to be like this? “Josh wants to -”

“Fine!” Josh threw up his hands. “I’ll work on blocking. Sheesh, I guess someone doesn’t want my recipe for special brownies.”

“You use a box,” Margo said. “I saw you bring, like, ten cases of them to Fillory.”

“That is not the special part,” Josh said, waggling his eyebrows.

“I don’t care about your stupid brownies,” Penny said. He turned to Quentin. “You have until tonight to learn to block or I will leave you in the middle of the Sahara Desert.”

 

***

 

Quentin knew he should be better at blocking, but it was hard. He had to constantly be thinking about not projecting his thoughts and it was exhausting. It was like that time in college when he had wondered if he left the stove on, but he didn’t have time to go back and check until after his exam and he spent more of the exam thinking about his apartment burning down than the actual test questions. Blocking felt the same and Quentin hadn’t gotten noticeably better at blocking even with the practicing he had been doing.

It didn’t help that he couldn’t stop thinking about Eliot. Ever since they hadn't gone to mosaic, but had those mosaic memories, he couldn’t stop thinking about Eliot. They’d been good together in that life, but that didn’t change anything about _this_ life. Eliot here was his best friend and nothing more.

Quentin was sitting next to Margo, who was doing her best to help him learn to block. Eliot was artfully splayed across a couch, sipping on a martini as he watched them.

“Maybe a wall isn’t your thing,” she said. “Have you tried picturing a forest? Oh! Or think about yourself like you’re in one of those holding cells from Star Trek!”

"The brig!” Quentin said. That could work. “Should I think of myself as being in the brig or everyone else being in there?”

“No,” Penny said. He must have walked down the stairs while Quentin wasn’t paying attention.

“I’m practicing now!” Quentin said. “You said I had until tonight.”

"You and I both know that is not going to work,” Penny said. He took Quentin by one wrist and started pulling him towards the kitchen. As Quentin shuffled behind him, Penny grabbed Eliot by his wrist.

“Oh!” Eliot exclaimed as he adjusted the hold on his drink as he was pulled into standing and then dragged alongside Quentin. Penny was holding Quentin’s wrist tight enough that it hurt. Penny dragged them to the coat closet, opened the door and roughly shoved Quentin in. Quentin spun to get out and saw Eliot hold up his hands in peace and come and join Quentin inside the closet.

“I’m doing this for your own good,” Penny said. He slammed the door shut and Quentin heard it lock.

“Hey!” Quentin yelled. He slammed his fist against the door a few times. “Let us out!” After a few moments of that and no response from Penny, he turned to Eliot, who had used a spell to make some light. He was already sitting on the floor, legs splayed out in front of him.

Quentin slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor as well, facing Eliot. They easily arranged their legs around each other in the tight space. Eliot pulled out a flask and handed to Quentin who took a long drink. Rum, nice.

“I’m fucking up the quest,” he said handing the flask back.

Eliot poured rum from the flask into his drink and swirled to mix it. “Penny’s being a dick, ignore him.” Eliot patted Quentin’s knee a few times.

“Despite not being able to block - ever - I somehow need to learn how to do it by tonight,” Quentin said. He let his head fall against the door and it made a satisfactory thunking sound, so he did it again.

Eliot handed him the flask.

“What’s your block?” Quentin asked idly. Eliot didn’t respond and Quentin felt bad for having asked too personal of a question. “Sorry, I thought maybe you had some trick and that’s why Penny locked us in here together. I guess he wants to punish us both for my shortcomings.”

“That’s not -” Eliot started. His fingers twitched in a way that meant he wanted a cigarette. “My block is a wall, a very specific wall,” Eliot finally said, his forehead creasing. “I had to take gym my freshman year of high school and we had to get changed in the locker room and there was a waist-high wall that separated the lockers from the showers - and I knew in the way that a rabbit knows not to cross a wolf’s path - I knew that I could not look over that wall. Not once, not out of the corner of my eye, not on accident. If I looked over that wall, I was as good as dead. The boys …” he trailed off. “The boys could sense that I was different and they were waiting for me fuck up so they could punish me.”

“El, I’m so sorry,” Quentin said.

“Don’t be,” Eliot said, waving a hand. “It was another lifetime. Three lifetimes ago, I suppose. There was college and that was like a lifetime and then there was Brakebills and then there was Fillory.” Eliot looked impossibly sad.

“Mosaic quest,” Quentin said. “Mosaic was a literal lifetime.”

“Mosaic was,” Eliot paused, licking his lips slightly as he searched for the right word, “a dream.”

“A dream?”

“It was every secret wish that I ever wanted and never deserved,” Eliot said. “A dream.”

“Oh,” Quentin said, his heart racing, his palms clammy. He sat up from where he had been slouching against the door. “It was like that for me, too,” he said. “We were happy.”

“We were,” Eliot said. “It was a simple time. I didn’t have a wife or a kingdom or even an email address.”

“Do you miss it?” Quentin asked. Quentin … did. He shouldn’t. It didn’t really happen, even if it felt like it did sometimes. They had decided their memories were only echoes, they weren’t real, even if they felt real.

“I miss Rupert and Arielle,” Eliot said. From Eliot’s lips, their names were poetry.

“Yeah, me, too,” Quentin said. His heart was thumping in his chest. Now or never. Do it, Q. “I miss you,” he managed to get out.

“I’m here,” Eliot whispered.

“I miss _us_ ,” Quentin said. "Being together."

“I do, too,” Eliot said in a small voice. He smiled and sipped his drink, his hand was shaking, a nervous tell.

“Can I kiss you?” Quenting asked.

Eliot smiled and answered by leaning forward, running his fingers through Quentin’s hair, and pressing his lips to his.

Bliss.

Their noses were smooshed together and Quentin tilted his head so that their lips slotted together just so, like the hundreds of times they'd done this. Eliot was playing with his hair and Quentin bit gently on Eliot's lip the way he loved. He loved kissing Eliot; they definitely shouldn’t have stopped doing this.

Eliot pulled back. “I can feel you smiling.” Eliot was smiling, too.

Quentin felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. “That was nice.”

“So is that brain of yours going to be able to be quiet for Penny?” Quentin wondered how much Eliot had figured out about what was leaking through to Penny. He thought about the wall that he’d help Arielle's brother build to keep cows out of the orchard. That would do for a block. “Yeah,” he said smiling.

“Great,” Eliot said and he flashed his fingers and the door swung open a few inches.

Wait a minute. “You could unlock the door this whole time?” Quentin asked.

“No closet can keep us in,” Eliot laughed. “Come on, let’s find Penny and see if your blocking is better.”

 

***

 

Penny was as ready as he could be. Now that Quentin had finally kissed Eliot in the coat closet, there was silence, blessed silence, from everyone. Penny had gone over the calculations three times, and had consulted the weather report in Fillory. He closed his eyes.

_Eliot has such a nice cock._

Penny’s eyes sprang open. He was going to murder that motherfucker Quentin Coldwater if it was the last thing he did.

**Author's Note:**

> “I've got a sweet tooth, for licorice drops and jelly roll” is a line from “Sugar Daddy” in _Hedwig and the Angry Inch_ , and it’s a song stuck in Eliot’s head. 
> 
> Title is from Emily Brontë, _Wuthering Heights_. "I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches, and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions, and him entirely and altogether."
> 
> I am on [tumblr](https://numinousnumbat.tumblr.com/).


End file.
